rewarding

Some days my job is so rewarding and it feels like my hard work pays off. We are taking the CRT's this week. Not my favorite, but it has to be done.

So yesterday we were doing one of the math sections. There was a hard question on there, that really I felt wasn't fair. I expected most of my students to get it wrong. But they all tried so hard and many surprised me. One boy, who struggles in school and who isn't usually one of my most motivated students, worked particularly hard on the problem. He finally, after much hard work, arrived at an answer...only to discover that it was the wrong answer...I watched over his shoulder to see what he would do. I honestly thought he would look at his answer and just pick the answer that was closest to his (which would have been the correct answer in this case...he'd made a minor miscalculation which made him off by one)... but he didn't. He looked over his work, found his error and figured out the answer....getting the correct answer and marking it. I literally teared up. I was so impressed at his thinking skills (he used great strategies to solve this difficult problem) and at his tenacity. It is so great to see kids really work through a problem and come to an answer on their own. It is moments like these that keep me motivated to do my job.